Still at the Lords, on Friday a Private Members’ Bill was put forward by James Wharton demanding that a 2017 referendum be written into law. A cabal of Europhile peers wanted to argue it into oblivion while Eurosceptic peers wanted the bill pushed through because the Commons wanted it passed. “They [the Commons] said, by their votes, ‘We don’t want to do anything about this,’” noted the Conservative Lord Cormack. “It now has a duty to allow the people of this country to have the referendum.”

As Tory MP Penny Mordaunt hopes to unveil a talent for diving in reality show Splash, Labour’s Luciana Berger has a secret skill of her own: photography. The newly appointed shadow minister for public health found to her surprise that The National, the English language newspaper in Abu Dhabi, had picked up and printed photograph of a mosque that she had taken.